Dive Brief:
- The most common way for digital retailers to encourage consumers to sign up for e-mail subscriptions is to place a sign-up form on their homepage, according to Publicare Marketing Communications.
- Some 87.3% of digital retailers in the United States offered e-mail sign-up on their homepages, while 18.8% incentivized sign up with coupons or deals.
- Only 12.6% required the establishment of a user account to sign up for e-mails, and just 5.3% place a sign-up sheet on a secondary page.
Dive Insight:
Almost nine out of 10 (87.3%) of U.S. retailers with a digital presence encourage sign up for e-mails simply by placing a form on their homepage, according to Frankfurt-based Publicare Marketing Communications GmbH. Analyzing more than 6,000 websites offering email subscriptions, the firm found that only about one-fifth (18.8%) incentive e-mail sign up with a coupon or special offer.
With improved targeting capabilities and platform-agnostic ubiquity, e-mail continues to be a workhorse channel for building awareness, delivering promotions and increasing sales. E-mail is also cheap to produce: Separate 2015 research from eTail indicates that its average contribution to company revenues exceeds its cost, 24% to 17%, whereas search takes 43% of ad dollars and delivers 38% of revenues.
